Navigating the Labyrinth: Left-Hand Rule

Over on Little Light's place in the discussion of intersectionality issues, magniloquence said in response to me:

"I think, along with the privilege, there's ... hrm, assumption of purity there? Like the yelliest feminists - the ones that put oppression as a woman before everything else, and who are most likely to cast everything in terms of their feminist viewpoint - tend to be the upper/middle class, relatively well-educated white ones. Not just because they're privileged and think they should dominate (though yes, that's huge ... and annoying), but also because for them, that's all that's happening. That's the only thing 'holding [them] back.' There's no intersection to be had there."

As I have mentioned now and again, I have, historically, serious issues with the values of the upper-middle class relatively well-educated white feminism I was exposed to when young -- largely because, well, it doesn't like my kind. Though I fit its nominal demographic.

And I'm now wondering if that's because sexism was never the primary issue holding me back in my life.

My primary issue? Education access. Trying to get a good education was the dominant issue of my childhood -- and I had parents who were doing the best they could for me, bringing that upper-middle-class privilege to bear on the school system, fighting for access to programs that could address my needs, able to pay for things outside the school's limitations. And I was fighting there as the precocious intellectual brat, which is a privileged position of a kind, but I still have this gut-kick reaction that damnit, if the education system worked better, if there were adequate funding, if there were more options available, if some of the craziness were removed, if people had the skillsets to do various things, that would Save Teh Wurld Tee-Em.

The horrible, horrible sexual harassment that made my junior high school days a living hell? Is subsidiary to the education access issue in my head -- because that was tied up in matters of school choice and familiarity, wound up dictating what schools I was willing to go to come high school (and I recognise that I had the privilege of an option to choose to escape the abuse, which is not something that other people, especially people with certain other intersections, have available) -- because I was a target because I was an asocial nerd, and thus I was rendered perpetually, constantly aware that my sexuality was being treated as a public chew toy because of being The Smart Girl, and nothing we could do could render my schooling free of that. It dominated my choice to do after-school activities (so I didn't have to take the bus home with the mangy hounds), it plagued me during the school day, and sexism only superceded the way that it ruined my access to education when I was told that nobody would do a damn thing about it because "boys will be boys". (That was my first exposure to institutional sexism.)

Secondary issue and first intersection? Mental health. Not just my own depression issues or my probably-PTSD, though that's a big chunk of it. But stuff like my cousin, whose intersections between learning disability/ADHD/race meant that he dropped out of high school and never went back (and look, there's the education access again, funny that). Not just my experiences with a parent who is probably mentally ill with more than depression, with the generational effects of alcoholism, with all that stuff. But things like -- I went to one of the Seven Sisters schools, right? Bastions of professional-class white feminism. One of the folks in my social group had been hospitalised because she was suicidal, and others of my friends tried to organise a trip to visit her there. And were told, more or less, "Don't you worry about the likes of her, she's shown that she's not good enough to be one of us. Go worry about your homework."

I wasn't terribly surprised that when my own mental illness issues led to me dropping out, I was bullied and browbeaten by the administration, and then abandoned by officialdom. (And look, there's education access again. Fancy.) At least I wasn't suicidal, eh?

After that it starts getting to be a complicated, tangled mass. Religious issues have mostly been my increasing sensitivity to language of religion that presumes beliefs that are not mine, such as some sort of monotheism (which I see both from majority-culture theism and the atheistic reaction to same). Sexuality issues have been largely an ongoing, underlying thread of anxiousness about my kink, partially induced by anti-BDSM feminism. I have ongoing concerns about the safety and security of my nontraditionally-structured family, which have been a major focus of activism for me for ten years now, because I want to get the world to be as safe as possible for my children before I have them rather than have to fear once they exist; that starts to blend into some other civil liberties stuff in a complicated way that I don't know qualifies under any adjective-related issues. I started developing body-image issues somewhere in my late teens or early twenties that I mostly don't talk about (they're currently under control, in any case).

I pass well enough as cisgendered under most circumstances that it doesn't much come up as an issue; I suspect that this has shielded me from a lot of issues over time, as it strongly shapes my experience of sex polarisation. My physical capability issues are both sporadic and comparatively minor. Race issues and queer issues and trans issues mostly come up because of supporting others, and I try to be aware of them though I suspect that I often don't do as well as I might.

If I had to boil the tangled mass down into a single thing it would be a constant, snarling wrestling match with categorisation -- the whole monstering problem, being the other in an inescapable around the edges way. There's this whole intricate morass of images that people get measured against, whole bunches of default-human assumptions, and they all rankle at some level. ( I used to measure myself against the standards of that white upper-middle-class educated feminism, and when I did I would break down in tears and feel like a worthless piece of shit.) But all the cardboard people rankle -- the this-or-thatness, or the assumptions of limitations, or the institutional biases against those people who don't happen to fit the cutouts the institutions favor. Freedom isn't fitting into the shape the institutions favor -- and some of us will still be unable to fit that shape, for whatever reason. Some of us will remain in the maze.

To not get lost in the labyrinth, keep one hand on the wall. Turn the same way at every intersection.

Here be monsters.